Today is a sad day for linguists across the world. Morris Halle, one of the great heroes in the history of modern linguistics, passed away at 3:45 AM. He will be remembered as one of the greatest phonologists of our time, authoring seminal works such as the Sound Pattern of Russian, as well as the even more popular Sound Pattern of English with Noam Chomsky.

In fact, Halle was the one who helped Chomsky secure his job at MIT. Together they rebelled against Behaviorism and American Structuralism, pioneering the field of generative grammar.

In memory of Halle, I’ve included two videos of him below. The first is his 50 Years of Linguistics at MIT lecture, and the second is an interview of him with John Goldsmith and Haj Ross. May his memory be a blessing.